Getting serious about genre pedagogy: designing and teaching genre-based units of work

Here is a wonderful example of the genre-based teaching-learning cycle in action in an English year 10 (10th grade) history classroom. I’m particularly impressed by the way the teacher/blogger, Lee, has integrated “the language of schooling” (in Mary Schleppegrell’s phrase) with the content of his course and the writing demands of the final exam (which has more writing on it than most American equivalents).

It’s been a while, almost 7 months in fact, since my last blog here. My initial enthusiastic rush of blogging frenzy back in March, written in 4 or 5 days at the end of the spring term just before I disappeared to China for two weeks’ holiday, petered out upon my return to school for the summer term when internal changes reduced our leadership team to only 3 people and I suddenly found myself doing at least 2 people’s jobs.

So I thought now was the perfect time to resume regular blogging: my wife is 38 weeks pregnant with our second child and I’m responsible for the imminent opening of our School Direct training programme to applicants for September 2014. I’ve got loads of time on my hands, so why not?

I’ve decided to resume penning my thoughts to any who will listen because I believe what I have to…